


on the foreshore of daybreak

by kurgaya



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 07:12:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12249510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: The yellow bands across her wings are even more striking as they unfurl, and not for the first time, he wishes that the Force had not seen fit to rid Chirrut of his sight. Baze is not a man of faith anymore, but there is something about this woman that intrigues him - something he cannot place or name, but something that Chirrut would attribute to the will of the Force, for better or for worse.





	on the foreshore of daybreak

**Author's Note:**

> baze = crowned eagle  
> chirrut = barn swallow  
> jyn = european goldfinch
> 
> cross-posted from tumblr.

“How does she look?” Chirrut asks.

Baze peels his eyes open. The patch of sunlight he has found blinds him momentarily, and white dots flash across his vision as he turns his attention to the crowd. Chirrut could be referring to anyone; there are certainly enough people to watch, dozens of hard days of hard lives bustling through the city, but there are few that warrant Chirrut’s attention. There is a woman half-hidden in a shawl, her face a shadow of frustration, of unease, her posture stiff beneath the star destroyer as it overwhelms the town. The blaster strapped to her thigh is personalised, a weapon constructed from need, well-used, and modified for success. There is nothing particularly remarkable about her - she is human, perhaps half Baze’s age, perhaps younger, and she shrugs through the crowd at her companion’s side, jostling shoulders and stomping toes as she does.

It is not her wings that has drawn Chirrut’s eye (or his ear), pressed close to her back and not making a sound, but they catch Baze’s attention. Why, he cannot explain; NiJedha is known for its flocking of winged beings, those gifted with feathers far outnumbering those who live without. Just as the Force flows through the earth and the kyber crystals that channel it founds the city, the Holy City gives wings to those who call it _home_. Not to all - but those whose spirits dwell in the light of the Force are blessed by the Force in return. Baze has not felt blessed for many years. But he had, once, young and hopeful and surrounded by the love he had always desired, and the Force had drawn his dreams out from his back and spread them in hundreds of feathers of gold.

The woman’s wings are far smaller than his - but this is true for everybody that Baze has met. Tightly packed, her feathers seem almost straw-like from a distance, or long, fine grains of sand spilling down her spine. Against the coppery backdrop of NiJedha, a city of sunlight perpetually shadowed by the Empire, her dusty brown and black wings would hide her well were it not for the band of sunflower yellow feathers stretching from base to tip. It looks as though a bolt of starlight has painted itself across her back, a river of gold through the baked bronze of a desert so desperate for water. The colour is captivating, more vibrant than Baze’s feathers could ever be, and captivate it does. The woman glowers at everyone who glances her way - even Baze, though he means not to stare, and even Chirrut, who though blind to her beautiful wings, certainly does.

Yet, Chirrut has not asked after her appearance - _how_ , he said, not _what_ \- and so Baze does not describe her. Instead, he shifts his weight against the cool Jedhan stone and drums his fingers against the trigger guard of his gun, watching as the woman turns to follow her companion into the crowd.

“She looks afraid,” is what Baze decides on, and Chirrut says, _ah_ , before rattling the coins in his bowl together and smiling at the sound.

Sometimes he claims they tell him things, but most of the time his ego implores that he attribute bouts of uncanny knowledge to himself.

“Would you trade that necklace for a glimpse into your future?” Chirrut calls, and the woman fighting against the marketplace stills. Travellers and off-worlders of a more unsavoury sort growl and curse as they sidestep her, but the NiJedhan locals only shake their heads, recognising the call of Chirrut’s voice as the temptation for danger that it is.

Baze hoists his repeater cannon up behind Chirrut, a reminder that he can and will do harm should one threaten the city (his home - the only person he has left anymore), and the woman bristles at the sight of it. Chirrut spares Baze a fond look of disapproval, a boyish expression aimed only in his general direction, bright and cheeky with wrongdoing, before rattling the coins again.

“Yes, I am speaking to you,” he calls out to the woman, neither looking at her nor at anyone. He has no need, for he sees everything at once and yet nothing at all, and he likes to disarm even from a distance. “What do you know of kyber crystals?”

“How did you know I was wearing a necklace?” she demands, storming over. The fire in her mouth matches the strike of fire across her wings; she sounds a woman well-used to intimidating, her words the short, shape blade of a dagger from a sleeve. Her wings twitch as she plants herself into the sand before Chirrut, but she does not open them as he does his own, his pearlescent black-blue feathers shaking away the morning’s dust. He has never felt the need to compress them, to hide them from sight. Were such a thing possible, Baze would have hidden his many years ago, but Chirrut’s adoration for his wings still persists despite the fall of the temple, and where his faith has never wavered, neither has his ability to fly.

Baze shifts his weight, drawing the woman’s attention. His wings, so heavy and mottled and huge as they are - so huge that he feels the drag of them constantly, two lumps of bone, feather, and dirt clinging to his back, a life he lived and lives to forget - cast him constantly into shadow. This is convenient for hiding his cannon and cells, for a weapon of its caliber is highly illegal even before one considers his modifications, but there is nothing to be done about hiding the cooling tank. It is almost as cumbersome as his wings, and the only way he can carry it upon his back is to trap one of his wings beneath it. To Baze, it is the logical choice, but there have been enough uneasy glances from other people to make him doubt. Wings in NiJedha may be a common sight, but that makes them no less reverent. They are a gift from the Force, and many hours were spent apart from the temple’s lessons and duties to care for the feathers, to present them clean and beautiful for the city to see. Baze’s wings were once renowned among the people of Jedha. Now, they have degraded into ruin, wilted as a sunflower from sun, his feathers thickened with oil and grime, weighing him down into a flightless shame.

Baze hates them so much sometimes he wishes to be rid of them.

“How did _you_ know I was wearing a necklace?” the woman asks him, eyeing his repeater cannon with a grudging regard. Now her wings are quivering, ready to stretch out in defence; she considers Baze a threat where with Chirrut she has not, and she is not the first to make such a grievous mistake.

Baze says nothing, watching her anger. The yellow bands across her wings are even more striking as they unfurl, and not for the first time, he wishes that the Force had not seen fit to rid Chirrut of his sight. Baze is not a man of faith anymore, but there is something about this woman that intrigues him - something he cannot place or name, but something that Chirrut would attribute to the will of the Force, for better or for worse.

They barter a little longer - her and Chirrut, his beaming smiles unyielding in the face of her questions - until a shout from across the market turns her away. It is her companion from before, a harrowed, wingless man with the hard-set expression that Baze recognises in soldiers and killers; _Jyn!_ he calls, before hissing something too low to hear and ushering her away. That she doesn’t re-fold her wings is telling, and Baze hums as she marches out of sight.

“The wingless man - a rebel?” Chirrut asks, although he is usually right about these things. Baze confirms as such, and Chirrut’s smile falls. “The Force reaches for him, but he refuses to follow. It stirs all around him, willing him to listen.”

“Should I have shot him?” Baze asks. He says it mostly in jest; the Force kicking up a fuss is not enough of a reason to harm anybody. Baze may fight only for Jedha’s sake, but he is reluctant to kill even the most dangerous of rebels if they are allies against the Imperial rule.

“No, I believe he will find his way when he must. The woman shines too brightly for him to ignore. Tell me - her wings, capable of flight?”

“Yes,” Baze sighs, glad to move beyond talk of the rebel man. He has a suspicion that Chirrut wasn't commenting _only_ on the rebel’s lack of faith after all. “But she hasn't flown in some time.”

“I agree. She held them too tightly. Perhaps accustomed to Imperial flight regulations?”

“Oh, like you?” Baze mocks. Chirrut’s night-time excursions have landed him in trouble more times than Baze can count, but nothing yet that Chirrut hasn't been able to bluff his way out of. The nights where Baze accompanies him to the rooftops are almost worse. Chirrut could light the Imperial night with how happy he is to fly, but still a sadness lingers in the moments in which he parts from Baze: the sky is the only place that Baze cannot follow, and now he is cursed to tether his beloved to the ground.

“Accustomed to a prison, I should think,” Baze says, before Chirrut’s smug smile can grow any wider. “Until the rebels found a use for her. You think they’re here for Saw?”

Chirrut turns the coins in the bowl over as though they will reveal the answer. One by one, he flips them flat side to flat, fingertips inspecting the edges and grooves for their value. He does not beg for the money, but for snippets of conversation that cling to each coin. “We should follow them and find out,” he decides, throwing the comment out.

Baze should be used to such flippancy by now. “Why?” he asks, although Chirrut has already thrust the bowl towards him. Even as he protests, Baze adjusts his cannon back into place with the magnets and then pours the coins into his coin-pouch. “Did the Force not tell you?”

Chirrut holds out his lightbow until Baze accepts that as well. Then, significantly lighter than both before and his other half, he kicks his staff up off the stone and twirls it into his hands. It clacks against the old Jedhan streets, and Chirrut’s wings ruffle happily at the sound. “What the Force does not tell me, it wishes for me to learn for myself. Come, they can’t have gotten far.”

He skips down from the steps and glides into the crowd, and Baze sighs at the lightbow in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! :)


End file.
